Jane Carter Investigates: Episode Five
As the car rolled into the building, I was startled by a squawking
flock of frightened chickens. Too late, I saw that we had driven not into an
empty shed but into one which was very much occupied.
A small pig had been penned in one portion of the room and
tethered to a post was a once-white goat. Three small children in soiled
overalls cowered against the wall, one crying in terror at this startling
intrusion of Bouncing Betsy.
A woman in a long, faded calico dress, holding a spoon in hand,
stared open-mouthed at us, while her husband, unshaven, straw hat set back on
his head at a rakish angle, slowly came toward the car.
“Mercy!” Florence said under her breath. “Imagine an entire family
living in a place like this!”
Retreat was out of the question. Bouncing Betsy’s engine was dead.
There was no use trying to start her again until the spark plugs had thoroughly
dried.
“I am sorry to have driven right into your home,” I apologized as
the man came over to the running board. “We never dreamed anyone was living
here.”
“This ain’t really our home. We’ve just been squattin’ here since
we lost our boat.”
“Well, at least you have a roof over your head,” I said. “And
that’s not to be sneezed at in a rain like this.”
It was still raining pitchforks and hammer handles, and wind
whipped around the building, making it creak in every one of its ancient
joints.
“It’s a right smart downpour,” the man acknowledged. “Won’t you
ladies git down and make yourselves to home? Though I reckon them cushions feel
softer than anywheres we got to set.”
Flo and I climbed out and were confronted by the entire Gains
family.
There was Ma Gains, from behind whose wide skirts the heads of two
little Gainses peered: Jed, who might have been ten or twelve; and old Joe
Gains, the father, variously known as “Rusty Gains,” and “Mud Cat Joe.”
“We’re river people,” Mud Cat Joe informed us. “And we’re plumb
off our beat a-livin’ in a cow barn. We ain’t naturally that kind of folks.”
“But what happened?” I asked. “Where did you used to live?”
“On the old Grassy,” Mud Cat Joe replied, jerking a scrawny finger
toward the rear of the shed. “The river runs right along back of this
building.”
“Did you work on the Grassy?”
“Work?” Joe repeated. “No ma’am, we lived on the river.”
“In a houseboat, but we think some bad men stole it,” said Jed,
the oldest boy.
“Yep, Jed is right,” his father said. “We had the slickest little
shanty boat that ever stuck on a sandbar. We tied her to the bank over thar to do
some tradin’. When we got back, all we had left was the raft. Someone had cut
the rope and gone off down river with our boat. So, we moved in here—us and the
pigs and chickens.”
“Pigs on a houseboat!” Florence said. “I never heard of that
before.”
“Oh, us river folks all have pigs. That is all except them that’s
too shiftless and ornery to put up with ’em. But we packed ’em around on the
raft, not right in where we lived.”
“But how do you live in a place like this?” Flo asked. “There
isn’t even a place to cook.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mud Cat Joe said. “Jennie, show ’em
your cookin’ truck.”
Mrs. Gains led the way to the back of the shed, pointing to a
rusty old iron cook stove whose pipe protruded from a large hole in the low roof.
“She draws like a house afire. Ain’t it so, Jennie?”
“It ain’t bad!” Jennie said.
“Jennie is the best corn pone baker on the river,” Joe said. “And
her catfish! She bakes ’em so they’d melt in a man’s mouth.”
“When we kin get ’em,” Jennie added.
“We ain’t had much vittles since The Empress was stole,” Mud Cat
Joe said. “You can’t ketch many fish from the shore, and the hens don’t lay
good when they ain’t on the river.”
“And the kids is nigh naked,” Jennie said.
“Yep, their clothes was all on the boat. Times is bad, but I allows I’ll build up another boat right soon if the skunks that took The Empress don’t bring ’er back. There’s right smart timber in this here shed.”
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